In a compositing network, use the tab menu to create a File node, or use the 'Add File Operator' dialog (`) to load one or more image sequences (one File node will be created for each sequence). When using 'Add File Operator, you can skip step 2 as it is done automatically.

Choose the file or sequence to load in the File parameter.

The node interprets paths without a frame number (for example, default.pic, butterfly1.pic) as single images. If the filename numbers, it considers the last number (ignoring the extension) to be the frame number of the image.

For numbered files, the node calculates the frame range automatically by searching the other files in the directory. The node will replace missing or bad frames with black or neighboring frames, depending on the value of the Missing frames parameter. The node cannot detect missing frames at the beginning or end of the sequence, though it will replace bad frames.

You can optionally load a lower-resolution "proxy" version of large file(s) to make compositing faster, if you have the proxy files available. On the Proxy tab, enter the filename pattern for the proxy files in the appropriate field.

For example, if you have half-resolution proxy images, choose one of the half-resolution files in the 1/2-Res Proxy field.

If some frames don’t have proxy images, Houdini will just use the full-sized frame.